Cane

The titular character of the first chapter, Karintha, is beautiful from a very young age. Her beauty endears townspeople to her, allowing them to overlook her wild and mischievous behavior. Karintha introduces the recurring female type in Cane of women who are misunderstood (or simply not understood at all) and whose behavior is condemnable by the people in town. Like Carma, Avey, and Louisa, she is sexually available; like Esther, she is unusual, only for her beauty as opposed to Esther’s naturally somber way; like Becky, she becomes pregnant outside of the traditional confines of marriage. Like Fern, men are inexplicably drawn to her.

Karintha is also, uniquely, “a growing thing ripened too soon” (3). Her astounding beauty introduces her to the world of desire and sex prematurely, where men count the years until they can sleep with her, and she herself “played ‘home’ with a small boy” (2), precipitating her coming of age. Likened to a “November cotton flower,” Karintha is thrust into a world where her value is primarily sexual long before she reaches adulthood. This rush toward sexual maturity is mirrored by the story’s structure, which jumps temporally; in one passage, Karintha is 12, and in the next, “Karintha is a woman” (2).